WND Oped: OHIO STATE ATTACK: WHAT DID WE LEARN?

December 7th, 2016

In endeavoring to identify a scintilla of logic related to events emerging from the Ohio State University attack in which Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, tried to kill pedestrians, first attempting mass slaughter by running over them with his car and then by jumping out to attack them with a butcher knife purchased for this purpose, a thread of logic emerges. To best discern it, one need consider the following:

1 According to his own Facebook entry, Artan acted out of anger his fellow Muslims were being killed in Buddhist-majority Burma, writing, “I can’t take it anymore.” So, since fellow Muslims were dying at the hands of Buddhists, Artan felt compelled to kill Americans.

2 Former Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich proferred, despite Artan’s declaration, “We may never totally find out why this person did what they did or why they snapped … we may never find out.”

3 While several victims were wounded during the attack, the only reason none was killed was the quick action of a campus police officer who shot Artan dead before he could inflict any fatalities. Yet, despite her son’s murderous rampage, Artan’s mother, just before her son’s funeral, lamented he had been killed “for no reason.“

4 Despite the Muslim attacker’s declared motivation for his actions, despite a declaration by ISIS he was acting in the name of his religion and despite an established track record of Muslims attacking non-Muslims, both in the U.S. and Europe, the White House urges us not to “increase our suspicion of people who practice a particular religion.” Accordingly, President Barack Obama refused to link Artan’s acts to radical Islam.

For anyone unable to grasp the common thread of logic in all this, it is the following: No one has used it to link Artan’s terrorist attack to Islam!

We can actually take this lack of logic further.

After the attack, Fox news correspondent Tucker Carlson interviewed Georgetown University’s Muslim professor Engy Abdelkader, asking her how one goes “from refugee to ISIS sympathizer in two years.” As a college professor and as a Muslim, Abdelkader’s answer was not surprising: Islamophobes are a driving force behind terrorism.

As Carlson queried whether a peaceful Muslim community should do some soul-searching on the issue, the professor would have none of it. Again, unsurprisingly, she sought to take the spotlight off Islam, claiming the anti-Muslim bias known as Islamophobia causes Muslims to suffer “cultural homelessness” so that they do not identify with their host country. Furthermore, she suggested, the greater terrorist threat was not posed by Muslims but by “white supremist groups and right-wing extremists.”

As Carlson disputed a terrorist threat Abdelkader falsely offered as fact – pointing out we have “had an awful lot of Americans killed and injured by Islamic terror in the last eight years” – and, thus, whether it was unfair to blame Artan’s violence on his victims, the professor responded, “Absolutely not!”

She credited the majority of Muslims as not only being peaceful but also contributing to society in a positive manner. When pressed by Carlson on whether there might be issues of violence within the Muslim community, the professor adamantly rejected such thoughts.

All of Abdelkader’s responses to Carlson’s questions were clearly designed to hold Islam blameless. They also were offered in accordance with Islam’s age-old principle of imposing a duty upon Muslims, known as “taqiyya,” to lie to non-Muslims on behalf of Allah in order to further Islam’s advance.

There are certain realities and facts, however, the professor simply cannot ignore about “peaceful” Islam:

Why are the world’s 27 most violentcities, experiencing the worst quality of life, all dominated by Islam?

Why do Muslims who criticize Christianity not have to live in fear for their lives while non-Muslims daring to criticize Islam do? A list of the latter includes the likes of Somali and former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, Danish cartoonist Fleming Rose, who drew Muhammad, and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders.

Why did a Moroccan television programon women’s beauty aides feel it necessary to air a segment on how best to hide domestic-violence bruises?

Why, as Abelkader claims, if Muslim Americans are the group most responsible for reporting tips to law enforcement about terrorist plots, is that not a telling indictment against her community that so many such plots are being hatched there?

A refrain from a song written by English singer Steven Patrick Morrissey repeatedly laments, “I’ll never learn.” In the wake of yet another terrorist attack by a Muslim in the U.S. and our continuing reluctance to link the attacker to his religious motivation, Morrissey’s refrain seems most appropriate.